Dev Update (27/08/2015)

Hi everyone,

Following on from last week's dev update our big focus at the moment is preparing for the CQC update beta and alongside it the Xbox One release. The CQC update is currently going through our internal QA pass and assuming this continues going well we’ll release the beta next week after the Bank Holiday.

CQC Championship is the main feature of the update and that has changed quite a bit since GPP2 on Xbox One. We've been working on matchmaking to improve its speed and reliability. The Xbox One version uses Xbox Live’s functionality, but for PC we have created our own, which is one of the features needing hammering in the beta test.

We've also added two new maps for the update: Ice Field and Asteria Point. Ice Field sees you flying through a dense asteroid field where skilled piloting of your ship is required and Asteria Point where the tunnels system in the main structure can be used to shake a tail. Customising ship loadouts is another great addition to CQC. As players rank up they'll unlock new weapons, abilities and internal modules that they can apply to their ships. Each item offers the player a different way to set up their ship so they can have it set up to match their playing style.

When players reach CQC Rank 50 they'll be given the option to 'Prestige'. Prestiging allows the player to set their rank back to 1 where they will lose all of their unlocks, but in return they will be able to earn more credits for use in the main game, a permit to the Attilius Orbital starport in CD-4311917 and a new icon next to their name to show others that this pilot is not to be trifled with. A player can progress up to Prestige Level 9 where they max out the amount of credits they can earn and are seen as one of the best fighter pilots around.

Players can earn credits for use in the main game when they play CQC. The amount of credits a player earns depends on their performance in the match as well as their ranking. The higher their ranking the more credits you can be awarded. When a player Prestiges they open up the possibility of earning even more credits as their rank, and reputation, increases.

As always with a major update there’s also a host of tweaks and fixes and we’ll post the change log when we release the beta.